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Young Henry Hill's House (Goodfellas, 1990)

If Raging Bull is Scorsese's best, After Hours his kookiest, then Goodfellas is certainly his most watchable. There is not a shorter 146 minutes in cinema. Following Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) from curious adolescent to resplendent gangster to fidgety cokehead frantically trying to stir sauce and move weight is one of cinema's most entertaining rides, even as it doles out the expected brutality. The scene where Henry attacks his future wife's neighbor with a pistol is still appallingly violent, to say nothing of the emotional violence that comes during the later domestic scenes, once adultery and addiction enter the picture.

In the film's early moments, everything is exciting. Henry's life seems full of possibility despite the violence stalking the film's periphery. In this scene, he jets out of his childhood home () to hang out with the gangsters that run his neighborhood. I've watched this film innumerable times without ever noticing anything amiss here, but after checking out the location I noticed something strange. Glimpsed in long shot, with his mother standing at the rail, there appears to be no space between the houses on this particular block. To the left of Henry's mother there's a rectangle of reddish-brown with brick on either side. When watching the film, it's easy to process that rectangle as being an extension of either building. However, at the real location one finds that there is significant space between the houses, which means that the rectangle of reddish-brown was probably added during post-production. Or else something was inserted, maybe a board, between the two house during the shoot to give the impression of an unbroken plane.

The original brick at the location has been covered in siding, and the cleaners across the street is gone, assuming it was ever there to begin with.